Anti-fascism
Last Saturday (2nd March), the EDL came to Manchester. My city.
They’re an abhorrent, racist, fascist organisation. Although they claim the title “English Defence League”, I’m sure we’re all aware by now that they stand solely as an anti-Muslim group.
There are some who suggest that we should ignore them and then maybe they’ll go away:
“How do we respond to the EDL? What is a good Mancunian response? We strongly believe that the best thing to do is to simply ignore them.”
It would be nice if this were true, but the reality is that the EDL are a hate group of fascist bully-boys (accompanied by more serious criminal elements), and the idea of them marching through a city as vibrant and proudly multicultural as Manchester unchallenged is truly sickening.
Ignoring a group like this is often seen as tacit support – it’s happened before, in places like Bradford, Oldham and Luton.
Ignore the fascists and their support grows.
“It has been proven that when fascist & racist groups are ignored, this merely causes an increase in Islamophobia and fascist violence
[...]
Manchester is a great multicultural city with a tradition of championing rights; we don’t want to stand by and watch racists bused in from outside Manchester”
- Tony Wilson, UNISON
“The fascist movement grows in times of crisis; the EDL is small today only because we have consistently moved to oppose them”
- Mike, Greater Manchester Unite Against Fascism
Furthermore, as a proud Mancunian, I couldn’t stand idly by and allow strangers to walk through my city and chant hate at my fellow residents without letting my Muslim neighbours know that we do not agree with them.
So I marched with Unite Against Fascism, against the EDL.
“This is the most amazing multicultural city I have ever lived in [...] the politics of hope must defeat and outlast the politics of hate and the EDL”
- Charlotte Smith, SWP“Manchester is a wonderful and diverse city, yet in Albert Square a minority of stupid people are preaching their repulsive, narrow minded bigoted ideology. This is our city; they have no right to be here”
- Chris Rea, Manchester NUJ
Unite Against Fascism on the march in Manchester
When we first arrived at Albert Square, and the 350-400 strong UAF contingent was penned opposite a large enclosure which swamped the 30 or so local EDL supporters, I must admit that I did start thinking that maybe ignoring the EDL would be a workable option…
As several hundred more EDL fascists arrived, chanting hate, waving anti-Islamic slogans and burning Pakistani flags, I reverted to my earlier opinion.
These aren’t just people I disagree with, people who are ‘a bit anti-immigration’.
They’re fascist thugs – desperate to find someone to blame for their own misfortune, and even more desperate to find someone to fight (which, throughout the day, manifested as fighting one another).
If we ignore them, they aren’t going to go away. They’re going to attack our fellow citizens for the ‘crime’ of being Muslims. Or of looking like Muslims.
You can *just* spot the Mancunian EDL in the distance
A rather larger, more varied UAF crowd, as you can see
The rest of the EDL turned up a bit later (from all over the UK)
As the photos show, the EDL membership seems to be made up of either men in their 50s or young boys, and very little between. It’s quite easy to see the older men grooming the younger (in a This is England way, hopefully; not in a Jimmy Savile way…); building a new generation of hate from the ashes of the old racist football hooligans and National Front groups.
And hate for what? For other Britons who have the audacity to follow a slightly different religion to them, or to wear different clothes. That’s it.
I live in what is now a largely Muslim community; my neighbours are friendly and profoundly Mancunian. They fly flags of St. George during World Cup season, and many speak Urdu and Farsi with Manc accents.
I have seen no creeping tide of Islamic extremism – only a gradual building of community that actually wasn’t there in pre-immigration days.
Children now play cricket in a park that used to belong to drug dealers. Boarded-up shop windows have been replaced by local businesses.
But even if none of that were true, if I had no experience of living amongst Muslims, I hope I’d still oppose the EDL. Attacking a minority for the actions of extremists is wrong (it would be like blaming all white people for the actions of the EDL).
And because once fascists have finished with one minority group, they inevitably find another to target – that’s how they operate.
Eventually, the minority is someone you care about. Or you.
“Speaking out against fascism is the right thing to do.
We care that our fellow Mancunians are being targeted – targeted not because they’re a threat; Muslims are targeted by the EDL because that’s what racists do.
Not here. Not in Manchester.”
- Daniel Gillard, Labour Councillor (Withington)
The EDL are clearly in their death throes, and it’s tempting just to sit back and wait for them to disappear; but they won’t, not entirely. They’ll rebrand, splinter and eventually reform under a different banner (or several different banners), and begin gathering support again.
Which is why we must oppose fascism whenever and wherever we see it, or we may not have a chance to oppose it at all.
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Posted by Dave in Bastardry, Politics (4/03/2013 at 19:38).
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Well, people like the EDL are relatively easy to deal with, actually. Way more problematic are the fascists that do everything they can to pretend they are not. People that present themselves as intellectuals yet publish books about how people from some regions of the globe are “genetically inferior”. I cannot name an example from the UK, but here in Germany there is, for example, a guy like Thilo Sarrazin who is a member of the so called social democrat party (which has shed off everything social but the name a long time ago anyway), and does exactly that: racist hate disguised as intellectual discourse. The the mainstream media praise him for “asking the difficult questions”, and then people who would oppose something like the EDL without hesitation nod and applaud such a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The UK equivalent to the social democrats are probably UKIP (“UK Independence Party”) and their leader Nigel Farage – who set themselves up as an anti-EU party, but have allied with a number of far-right groups in Europe.
Their agenda is similarly concealed behind a veneer of acceptability – there are many UKIP members and voters who do just oppose EU integration, but there are several others who are very definitely racist, homophobic etc.
(The British National Party (BNP) also at one point tried to paint an acceptable face on racism, but they were never very good at it)